Author of three books. This blog not very active so follow on Twitter: @gary_weiss

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Harlem: Return to 1935

Harlem's ethnic makeup in 1935

I've always been fascinated with Harlem. I attended school there, and my first journalistic effort, for a long-dead weekly, was an article on the remaining Italian community in Harlem. So I was fascinated by an article in the New York Times today on how central Harlem is becoming multiethnic.

What I liked about this article is that it acknowledges what people sometimes forget, which is that Harlem has a long tradition of being multiethnic.:

Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, said, “Harlem has become as it was in the early 1930s — a predominantly black neighborhood, but with other groups living there as well.”

That's right, and I'm surprised the Times didn't reprint the map it ran back in 1935, showing the ethnic residency patterns in Harlem at the time. As you can see, a good part of central Harlem was non-black, and at the time all of East Harlem was white and Hispanic. My father's family used to live around Lexington Avenue in East Harlem during and after World War I.

People frequently forget how New York's ethnic character has shifted dramatically through the years. Not many people know that Greenwich Village, especially the area around Minetta Lane, used to be the biggest black neighborhood in New York long before Harlem.

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About Me

I'm a journalist and author. My latest book is AYN RAND NATION: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul (St. Martin's Press: Feb. 28, 2012). My previous books were Wall Street Versus America (Portfolio: 2006) and Born to Steal (Warner Books: 2003). I was an investigative reporter and Wall Street writer for BusinessWeek, a contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio, and have written for the Daily Beast, Parade magazine, Salon, The Street.com, Fortune.com, Barron's and many other publications. I was an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of Journalism. Follow me on Twitter @gary_weiss Email: garyweiss dot email at gmail dot com